Daniel's Tales
by Jads
Summary: A collection of unedited, unbeta-ed oneshots and vents that I use to rid myself of plot bunnies and give little previews to my future fics.
1. Half a Remembered Dream

**Half a Remembered Dream**

Jack blinks, and looks around. Seeing a couch, a TV, and a table, he then proceeds to realize that he is in the living room. Why is he in the living room? He racks his brain, but nothing comes to the forefront of his mind. Was he watching the TV? Reading? Fixing something? Going to the kitchen? Ah, that must be it. He was going to the kitchen, and he needed fudge. He needed fudge right now.

Arriving at the kitchen, Jack is rummaging through the cupboards to search for a clean plate, when suddenly, a voice sounds from behind him.

"Hello, Mr. Jack Fenton. My name is Mr. Charles."

Jack starts, then turns around. Only now does he realize that the house was strangely quiet. The man standing in front of him looks to be about 40 years old, had black hair streaked with blonde, and piercing eyes. The eyes look at him, reassuring, calming, and all-knowing. He speaks once more.

"You are in a dream, Mr. Fenton. This is all a dream."

Jack raises an eyebrow.

"Oh? Well, then, this should work in here."

Then he opens a door built in the side of the fridge, and pulls out a blueprint of some sort.

The man, or Mr. Charles as we should call him, stares at Jack's strange behavior, puzzled.

"Ah hem, Mr. Fenton?"

The man in question hardly looks up from his poring over the large blue paper.

"Yeah?"

"What are you doing?"

"I'm talking with my subconscious."

Mr. Charles coughs into his fist.

"Excuse me?"

Jack glances at the strange man, and starts to explain.

"You see, your subconscious is the one that supply youwith ideas. If you are right and this is all a dream, I am now directly communicating with my subconscious, and I'm making the best I can out of it. Which is making new gadgets!"

A flabbergasted look ghosts across Mr. Charles' face. One of his all-knowing eyes twitch.

_Oh, what have I gotten myself into? _His face screams, _this is just strange in so many levels._

Outside, he tries to do his job.

"Mr. Fenton, you are going to wake up in a few minutes."

Jack flips the blueprint over, _hmmm_-ing.

"When you wake up, check your daughter's room. Especially under her bed."

This gets the man's attention.

"What? Why?"

"There's something you need know under there."

Jack frowns.

"Won't Jazzypants mind if I do that?"

The guest of the house put his hand on the bigger man's shoulder.

"Jack. Jasmine went to a camp, remember? She and your son, Danny."

"Huh. I don't remember hearing about that."

"Trust me, Mr. Fenton," _let this task be over_ "I'm part of this dream. I'm part of your projections by your subconscious. I hear everything you hear, and while you may forget it, I do not."

Jack hmm-s again and rubs his chin in thought. Mr. Charles holds his breath.

"Could be, I guess."

And with that, Mr. Charles breaths again, his nose filling with the scent of fudge. He then checks his watch, and tells Jack that;

"You will be waking up in three…two…one…"

Jack's eyes slammed open. He was lying on his bed in the room where he and Mads shared. Groaning, he clutched his head, trying to remember….something… There was something he needed to do…

Ah, he got it! He should check Jazz's room!

Grinning ear to ear with triumph, he bounces up from the bed and jogs down the hallway. The house was empty, Jazzerincess having gone to camp with Danno. And Mads…? Jack faltered a bit, before remembering the note on the bedside table that said that she was out shopping. And with that, he passed Danny's room and got to his daughter's room.

_Wow. She likes pink, eh?_ He thought as he looked around. Her room had papers spilled over her desk, a computer that was turned off, a bed, a closet aaaand wait. Bed.

Jack walked towards the pink bed and stooped to look under it. A lone box was there, named simply 'Danny'.

_Danny? Awww… My girl cares so much for her brother that she has a box for him!_

Jack pulled said box out and put it on the pink bed, sitting down next to it. The bed sagged under his weight, but he paid this no heed.

The box was plain cardboard, brown, and looked like it had held some shoes earlier in its box-life.

With the enthusiasm of a kid opening his birthday present, he ripped open the top of the box-and frowned.

Yes, the box was about Danny, but wasn't about who he thought it would be. There were hundreds of newspaper clippings about the ghost boy, Danny Phantom!

_Why would Jazzypants keep these? Is she doing some research on rogue ghosts? Yes, that could be. Unless…_

_Unless she wants to pursue the career of ghost hunting!_

Excited by this new revelation, Jack's wide grin returned. He also felt a small tear fall from the corner of his eye, and reached to wipe it.

"Finally Jazz comes to accept the family legacy!" He boomed to no one in particular, and started to shift through the various newspapers in the box. Various articles appeared. The one about the King ghost attacking the town was particularly amusing to read.

There were also pictures. Colored pictures, black and white pictures, and so on. While looking at these, Jack came across a particular picture that looked like it had been placed there a few days ago. How he knew this? He had this feeling that this was new, and that he needed to look at this closely. And that's what he did.

It was a black and white picture, common in the papers, but someone had colored it. Here, Phantom's hair was black and his eye was blue, and had a smiley face drawn over his usually cocky grin.

_Eh?_

Jack did a double take. When he recovered, he started a monologue in his head that went like this;

_This-this looked a lot like…Danny. My son Danny, that is. But if Danny is Phantom, and Phantom is Danny…Their first names match…That just isn't possible. Someone can't be dead and alive at the same time, could they? It was proven when Schrödinger stuffed a cat into his gas chamber…_

_Just assuming that this was possible, then how? Shouldn't one be stuck in limbo to achieve such a state? The in-between state. A coma? Hmm. But a person with a coma couldn't walk around, could they? Is Danny in a coma? He's a vegetable?_

_Hurrrgh._

His mind did something like a fizzing back-flip, and spouted an immediate panic-recation.

_I need fudge._

Still holding the confusing news article in one hand, he stood up from the pink bed and started to walk towards the door.

Halfway there, everything lurched and he found himself falling to the floor with a 'thump'

He grunted, distoriented. Huh? Where was he? He was on the living room floor. The sofa next to where he was lying had a white blanket on it. He touched it. Warm. The blanket was still warm.

So, he had been sleeping on the couch?

A dream?

A dream _within_ a dream?

Charles?

He had a feeling that he was missing something…Something about a cat…and vegetables…and the kitchen?

Standing up, Jack grimaced and put a hand to his head. Falling down from the couch onto the floor was not a good idea.

He needed some fudge now.

And he lurched to the kitchen to get one, avoiding the veggies on the middle of the table and using a cat-shaped plate, just in case. Then he pulled out a piece of paper and wrote

'Fenton Dream Getter' on the top.

Then he started planning the device that managed to pop into his head.

Maybe he should sleep on the couch more often.

Meanwhile, outside the house…

A man, who we came to know as Mr. Charles, slipped inside a black van.

"So, how'd it go?" the man in the driver's seat asked.

Mr. Charles grimaced.

"We underestimated him by a mile. His mind is complicated, and only he can make sense of it. Though he looks and acts like an idiot, he has a superior intellect hidden down there."

Charles slipped his hand into his pocket and pulled out a small object. He pulled out a clipboard from the back of a chair and spun the object on the clipboard. It spun for a while, tipped, and fell down. With this, Charles sighed with relief.

After a small silence, the driver spoke.

"So now what?"

"Now? Now we go home."

At the strange look the driver gave him, he added; "To our _respective homes._"

Then he shuddered and said;

"I don't want to look at fudge ever again."

"You are such a simpleton." The driver commented, and the car pulled out.

**A/N. I watched **_**Inception**_** today! *waits for cries of "finally!" to die down* and I just HAD to write something for it, so here it is!**

**edited 2010/09/11: **** Ok, Jads here. For those of you who have already been reading this, you may notice that this chapter used to be the fourth one. You see, I'm doing a bit of an experiment here, so bear with me, eh? :D **

**What I'm trying to test is 'first impressions', and whether putting this up first will change any traffic to my story or not... Or it's just that I'm debating if I should take the former chapter one (now chapter three) down. Whatever. :P**

**So, see you all next update!**

**~Jads**


	2. Accidental

**TWO**

**Accidental**

_Crud,_ I thought as I stumbled through the numerous corridors. _Crud oh crud oh crud this is _not_ good. _

"Why on Earth does Vlad have so many rooms?" I muttered furiously, taking a left turn, then a right one, right again, only to meet a dead end. _Crud._

Vlad's infuriating laugh wafted through the corridors.

'You can't run, Daniel,' he seemed to say in his laugh. 'This is _my _house. In _my_ house, _I _rule.'

I snarled and whirled around, clutching the Plasmius Maximus in my right hand closer to myself. My eyes darted left and right, searching for the attack that was surely coming this way.

A small 'click' caught my attention and I spun to face the direction it came from, wincing as the place where the twin prongs of the Maximus had hit me a few minutes ago twinged. _Damn, _Plasmius didn't have to stab my side _that_ hard.

I took a step backwards, away from the suspicious sound, when an intangible hand suddenly shot up from the floor, grabbed my foot, and pulled me down through a couple of stories, then slammed me face-down on the carpeted floor.

I grunted and struggled to get my foot free, but my attacker-probably Plasmius- held on fast. I lashed out with my other foot, kicking backwards, and was satisfied to hear a dull thunk. Man, it felt good to know that I managed to land a blow on Vlad even though the action sent a sharp pain to shoot up my leg.

"Quit _moving,_ whelp!" Plasmius cried from the level of my foot, like that was going to happen.

Feeling cold hands start to grab the back of my neck, I lashed out with my right fist, hoping to catch him with the Maximus, and managed to clip Vlad on the-

Wait.

Vlad called me 'whelp'?

Twisting around, I stared in shock as Skulker cried out in pain, the pronged device sending bolts of ectoplasm-repressing energy throughout his form.

I quickly pulled the device away from the ghost, but the damage was done. Skulker lay on the carpet, twitching, and generally looking as if he had just been tazered-which, technically, he had- when his suit slowly started to die. With a high-pitched whine, parts of his armor stopped moving and 'relaxed'. His flaming Mohawk was slowly doused, and his glowing green eyes turned themselves off.

"Sk-skulker?" I stuttered. I poked the armor, hoping that it was a new trick that he had learned.

"Skulker?" I tried again. I hoped that he would spring up, throw a net around me, and cry out 'Got you now, Whelp!'

Nothing helped.

From the edge of my sight, I saw Vlad appear at the corner of the room that we were in, but pretended to not take notice. I couldn't bring myself to tear my eyes off Skulker's armor.

"Skulker?**"**

**

* * *

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**Kinda short, I know. Exactly one page on word.**

**uploaded 2010/5/30**


	3. Jumping Dimensions

Alrighty, a little preview-thing that I came up at one in the morning. I tried out a new style here-third person... something. Anyway, almost all the 'Her/She's and the 'His/Him's point to one person, but if you get confused, leave a review, and I'll answer.

**Well, lets just get on with the show, shall we?**

Oh, yes. If you spot any typos or grammer mistakes-there's bound to be some- tell me. And I'll fix it.

**Here's the first chappie of my one-shot collection, Daniel's Tales.**

**

* * *

**

**ONE**

**Jumping Dimensions**

She was hunched behind her dest, staring intently at the textbook. On her right lay her iTouch, being charged by a white cord leading from the ground. On her left, a few notebooks lay, thrown haphazardly on each other.

She started to murmur events and the dates when they happened, trying to memorize them.

The ceiling lights flickered.

She looked up, frowning, then turned back towards her desk. She had her mid-term exams tomorrow and had to study.

The lights did its thing again, only this time, the widows rattled in sinc with the lights.

Her eyes widened. _Great, _She thought, _I can't study in these conditions! _ She was not being sarcastic.

She paused.

_I-I mean, Oh no! _She corrected herself,_ I can't study!_

The lights and the windows stopped their little party, and she begged them to continue with her eyes.

They did, and this time, they brought a little ball of darkness with them. The ball started to shoot something that strangely looked like lightning around the room. It struck various parts of the room, singing the walls and finally breaking the lights. They went out with a disappointed 'Smash!'

_Hey! _She thought, _Awsome! Although I have to say, breaking the lights seemed to be a bit overboard, but- hey! Watch it!_

Then she lept towards a wall full of posters and pictures, landed in front of them, and started yelling in her head _No! No one touches this wall and the posters except me!_

The ball of darkeness paused for a bit, then after giving a noncommittal shrug, started attacking the rest of the room once more.

After a few minutes, the ball grew slightly in size, and became as big as a small car and suddenly disappeared. _Weird._

She opened eyes that she didn't realize that she had closed and looked around her room.

The wall behind her, still intact. She breathed a sigh of relief.

Her textbooks, neatly fried and still on her desk. She grinned.

A boy floating where the black ball had been, a boy with black hair wearing a white T-shirt and jeans, staring around him with surprised blue eyes.

Her mouth dropped open. 

* * *

He was zoning out as usual while his teacher droned on and on about Shakespeare. His eyes drooped, his head sagged, and he was getting ready to take the express train to dreamland when there was a sharp tugging on his neck and he was swept away, yelling in surprise.

"_Prince Caspian, _what is going on here!" His teacher shouted, not at all surprised by the screams of his students; after all, screaming students were common in _this_ town.

* * *

He was swept along a black tunnel of sorts, twisting and turning. Once, the tunnel took a sharp turn and he was thrown into the walls. Hurtling towards the walls, he had briefly panicked, but only his arm managed to get through the wall-yes, _through_ the wall- before getting jerked back by his neck. The walls were as in substantial as smoke.

He propped at his neck and discovered a thick golden collar around it. He groaned and tugged at it, a feat he knew would prove to be useless.

Suddenly, there was a deafening BOOM and he heard glass breaking. Startled, he felt along the collar to check if it had broken, but no, it hadn't.

He jumped again when he heard a voice bellow "_No! No one touches this wall and the posters except me!"_

The black, swirling walls around him began to flash like a thundercloud threating to drop its burden on the poor unsuspecting people below, and he swallowed nervously, not wanting the walls to notice him.

Slowly, the flashes grew brighter and brighter, bigger and bigger until there was a blinding FLASH, and the tunnel dissipated.

_Just like smoke_, he thought, then looked around. He was in a room, a room full of scorch marks and the smell of vaporized paper.

_Woah_, he thought, looking around. _How big was the ghost that attacked here? Why does all the walls look like it was attacked by a fire-breathing dragon except for that wall over there? Who's that girl in front of the wall? Wow, that's a big poster…. Hey! Is that me?_

While he was busy staring at himself fighting Ember in a gigantic life-size poster and wondering how on Earth they got that picture, the girl in front of the poster opened her eyes and looked around. She actually smirked as she saw the damage done to her romm and when her eyes fell on him, she gasped.

They stared at each other for a moment, the he opened his mouth.

"Er… hi?" He tried, rubbing his neck. At least, he tried to, but was stopped by the collar.

Her expression changed from an all-out stare into a tentative smile, then she lept up on her bed and shrieked "I knew it!"

He jumped and fell to the ground with a dull 'thunk'.

"Ow! Wha-"

"I knew it! I just _knew _it! I knew you were real!"

He looked at her, confused, and opened his mouth to say something. Then he was interrupted by the collar around his neck. It sparked slightly and yanked him into the black vortex once again, headed towards another dimension.

She just stared in the direction of the boy for a few minutes, then suddenly turned and walked towards a bookshelf. She pulled out a black notebook, flipped through a few pages, and read:

_ Then his collar came to life, pulling him back into the swirling tunnel and towards another world. His world, actually, but he didn't know that._

She laughed slightly in triumph, took out a pencil, and flipped back a few pages. Then she fixed a few words here, added something there, and waited for something to happen.

She didn't have to wait long, since another vortex came along and fixed up the mess that was her room to its original state- messy, but no singe marks. Then it zapped her textbooks just for the heck of it-all according to plan. However, what happened next was completely unexpected: a pair of golden manacles appeared around her wrists and pulled her inside the vortex, along with the notebook and pencil.

* * *

He hurtled through he tunnel once more, and then landed on something hard and veryl cold. Looking around, he noted that he was on a platform of sorts, floating in a black, black void. He shivered as the already-cold temperature of the place dropped another notches.

"Ah, Daniel, thou have come." A voice sounded from the shadows on his right, and he whipped around to face the voice.

"Uh… Do I know you?"

"No, not me. But you know someone who is related to me." The voice said this, and then tossed a medallion to him. He picked it up to see that it had two letters 'CW' on it.

"Clockwork. You're related to Clockwork?"

"Ah, yes," said the voice, "He has told me a lot about you, Danny."

He looked around the platform, but saw nothing that could have a mouth and a voice coming from it.

"Who the heck are you?" He asked.

"He told me about how you defeated Pariah Dark," the voice continued as if he didn't ask the question, "He told me how you battled your future self and won."

"Why are you telling me this? Who are you? What is this place?" It felt good to be asking questions. It just became frustrating when it didn't become answered.

"Now, tell me, Danny. How was your trip to the Real World?"

* * *

Moments later she disappeared into the rupture in dimensions, her dad called

"Cynthia, honey? You alright in there? We heard shouts and bangs and- Oh my Gosh!"

Her father opened the door to her room to find not his daughter, but a pile of smoldering ashes on her desk, spelling the words 'NATE'.

* * *

**If I didn't make it clear enough, here's an explanation;**

**the black notebook? Cynthia wrote it.**

**Oh, and a big thanks to Cynthia Shin, who allowed me to use her name!**

**THanks!**

**I bet y'all are just brimming with questions, eh? Who the heck is the 'voice'? What is 'NATE' supposed to be?**

**Well, uh... guess! Heh. If someone gets it right... I dunno... I'll give them some Korean lessons? Ah, whatever. I'll just give them a cyber cookie _and _a Korean lesson. Tempted? No?**

**Ah... I saw the Phantom of the Opera*squeal*(the musical) today with my Friend... well, technically, it's yesterday because it's two in the morning, but what the heck. And it was just AWSOME! **

**I mean, I knew that the music was great, but the actors and the whole storyline, they're just... WOW...**

**Although I really liked Raul's face, no one can beat Phantom! He's a very complex person-alone and jeered at since birth, abandoned by his own mother because of his appearance, betrayed by the very woman that he loved... Xp love love love Phantom. Really. Maybe I'll do a little fic starring Phantom and er.. Danny. That is, Phantom as in the musical and ...Gah! You know what I mean!**

**WHY am I talking about this? **

**Anyway, Until next time!**

**Rock on, folks!  
~JackieDanielStark**


	4. Jumping Dimensions Again

**THREE**

**Jumping Dimensions….again**

"You're weak, Daniel." the three Vlads sneered, landing next to the fallen boy. "Just like your _idiot_ father."

The younger ghost raised his upper body from the ground with unstable arms. He was panting and shaking, but he had enough strength to spit out;

"My dad isn't an idiot!"  
"Oh really? Then tell me, little badger, what he is. What was he, when he miscalculated the formula for the proto-portal in college? What was he, when he placed the 'on' switch /inside/ the portal, hmm? Tell me!"

Vlad leaned into the boy's face with a maniac gleam in his eyes.

Daniel looked up to meet Vlad's eyes and said simply; "He was my dad."  
One of Vlad's eyes twitched.

Daniel smirked weakly at this, knowing that he had hit a nerve.

"Fine, Daniel." Vlad spit out, straitening up, "Fine. You want to be stubborn? Want to let your emotions take over your actions? Fine." He then rose to his full height.

"You leave me no choice."

Then, Vlad absorbed his two duplicates, and with a whirl of his cape, disappeared in a puff of pink smoke.

Surprised with the sudden departure, Daniel slowly raised himself to his feet. Unable to think of a witty comeback to the last remark, he stood there for a few more minutes. Finally, he got one.

"And stay away!" he bellowed to nothing in particular, still looking bemused.  
"No, I don't think I will"

Alarmed, Daniel whisked around to see Vlad.

Again.

Daniel mentally groaned.

"_Why_ am I surprised?"

"Why indeed. Did you _really_ think I left, Daniel? If so, you must have more of your father's genes in you than I had originally thought."

Daniel slowly backed off from the vampiric ghost, eyes darting left and right.

"Of course, I should have expected nothing else," Vlad continued, not moving from his original spot, "you _are_ Jack's son after all."

Daniel continued his slow trip backwards, until his back hit something, and that something grabbed his arms and pinned them to his back. He twisted to look behind him and saw another Vlad, leering at him.

"Wha-"

"Duplication and decoys, my boy." The Vlad behind him said, smirking.

"One of the oldest tricks in the book." The other Vlad said, just as smug.

"What do you want from me?" Daniel exclaimed, then added "well, except for the usual 'Marry my mom, kill my dad, and make me your son' thing."

"Me? I want some logic from you, little badger." Vlad-in-front said, "Non-emotional, cool-headed logic. Just think of what I might teach you. Put away that irrational anger directed towards me, and _think!_ I can make you great, son. I can make you the strongest ghost in all of the Ghost Zone and the Human World! I can-"

"Thanks, but really, no thanks." Vlad's rants were cut off by a disgusted Daniel. "I might have a lot of dreams, but being tutored by a crazy old _lonely_ fruitloop isn't one of them."

Vlad growled, closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. Daniel struggled against his captor Vlad's grip, but couldn't get free. Suddenly, Vlad re-opened his eyes, which was now shining with determination.

"Fine, Daniel," He said, "As I said before, you leave me no choice." Then, he reached behind him to a backpack, which wasn't there when he first attacked the younger ghost, and pulled out two metallic gloves.

The Ghost Gauntlets, Plasmius style.

Seeing this, Daniel's eyes widened, and he started to struggle wildly.

"NO-Vlad, you, you don't know what you're doing! I-"

"Of course I know what I'm doing." Vlad snapped at him, pulling on the gloves. "I'm going to separate your human emotions from your ghostly body so you'll have some time to think straight."

Vlad touched a button on the side of the Gauntlets, and ten five-inch long claws shot out of each of its fingertips, each glowing a vivid crimson. What color he had left in Daniel's face drained away at this.

"N-no, you're wrong! Those human emotions are what neutralizes my, our, ghostly instincts! W-without them, the world will be destroyed! If this goes wrong-"

Daniel twisted and managed to get one of his arms out of the death grip, but it quickly got caught again. Vlad frowned, and let electricity surge through his captive, making the boy shout with pain, then hang limp, panting.

"This will not go wrong." Vlad said, checking the tips of his claws and completely oblivious to the child's yells of pain. "Do _not_ speak as if you know what's going to happen."

"But… I do know…what will happen." Daniel gasped out, desperate now. "This will end badly, I just know it. Clockwork! Clockwork, help! I-ARGHH!"

His words were cut off when Vlad plunged the claws into the teen's chest. Vlad's duplicate quickly let go of the ghostly teen and got absorbed back to the original. The greed hands of the boy snapped forwards to clutch at the gauntlets.

Ignoring the hands, Vlad forced his arms to separate, ripping Daniel's human half from his ghost half. The human half slid off the claws and fell to the ground, clutching a gigantic gash on his chest that was bleeding profusely. His ghost half remained on the claws, spectral tail thrashing and his whole body convulsing, screaming with pain.

**A/N right. This one is a preview to a story I'm starting to write, called Jumping Dimensions! So, er, yeah. This one is an excerpt from chapter one, and the actual story should come out sometime later this year. I still need to work the kinks out of writing in Danny's POV, the way Clockwork talks, and Vlad. **

**So, constructive criticism at this level would be nice :D**

**~Jads, out**


End file.
